


The Truth In the Name

by Sifl



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Abstract, Gen, Very abstract, this is both a slam on Gohan's character and a rice pun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 23:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6030517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sifl/pseuds/Sifl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The superstitious say that everyone's name has a deeper meaning and steers your destiny.</p><p>In Gohan's case, there might be some truth to that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth In the Name

**Author's Note:**

> (This is very, VERY loosely related to the thematic continuity/driving subtext of Heavy, but there is no need to have read it beforehand.)

And the child was born in a nearly unheard-of corner of the universe to one of the last and clueless pieces of an ultimately inconsequential warrior legacy, and a mother clinging to the dregs of a kingdom her planet had all but stopped even whispering stories about. The boy was named for a grandfather whose corpse sat in the belly of a beast who forgot all about making a meal of him in the first place; he was named for the spare scraps of uneaten food on the table.

Gohan was taught by a ruined and broken evil as an afterthought, because the boy was all that was left to take after his father- a nobody- finished the first leg of his journey on earth and stood front and center in the eyes of the gods.

The boy was then served up as a savior in place of his father- yes, he was offered to a world far off and beyond the stars dotting the night sky when no other was able to take the role.

He was cast aside, too, when his father- arisen, the hero all along, glowing with both divinity and wrath- returned, and faced down a tyrant with a heart of ice. The boy’s potential was saved for later, for a day when everyone else's had been used up.

Then, the boy’s father died as he lived and died and then lived again, as the Earth’s saving grace, and left the honor of sating the Earth's fears in times of crisis to his son, an unprepared child who had been the one to damn his father in the first place.

Years later, the God of the Eastern Universe scrounged for a light of hope in the wake of the universe’s greatest evil. He chose Gohan, because the boy was the only one left at that eleventh hour, and cobbled together for him a hastily made plan from a sword, and then, when that fell through, with an old man he found lying around in the shrapnel.

And so, when Gohan inevitably failed and his father again filled the hero’s shoes, the universe only shrugged. 

Gohan had only ever been leftovers, anyway.


End file.
